A LITTLE SPICE FROM GINGER : Pentagon: 1st and 2nd times are a charm
Posted on Wednesday, August 6, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/hl/Lifestyles/25268/
Being a member of two separate conferences in Washington, D. C. this summer afforded me the opportunity to tour many of the “ big attractions” twice.
Contrary to my initial expectations, this was not a bad thing. Hearing the different tours given by two separate guides was either doubly informative or reinforced knowledge I already had.
One of my favorite parts of both conferences this summer was touring the Pentagon. When I was younger, I had at least physically seen the Capitol, the White House, and the monuments, despite my inability to really appreciate them until recently. But the Pentagon was still on my to-do list, so touring it twice was a welcome opportunity. Here are the things I knew about the Pentagon before the tour: 1. ) It has five sides, and 2. ) It holds many secrets. And now, here are a few of the many things I learned after two Pentagon tours this summer.
1. ) The Pentagon is huge. Composed of five “ rings” of hallways on five floors--which add up to 17. 5 miles of walking distance — it is one of the largest office buildings in the world.
2. ) The Pentagon has to be huge — over 25, 000 people work there. Each side is over 900 feet long. The U. S. Capitol could fit into any one of the five “ wedges ” of the Pentagon. Despite its sprawling size, the Pentagon is incredibly efficient — it was designed so that one could travel from any one point to any other point within seven minutes. Our tour guide explained the special system the Pentagon implements to label its rooms. The floors are numbered 1-5, and the “ rings” of hallways are lettered from A-E from the center radiating out. Room number 4 D 210 is on the fourth floor, in the D Ring, about two tenths of the way around the D Ring in the clockwise direction.
“ How about a game ? ” said our guide. “ I’ll give you a room number and you have seven minutes to find it. ” As soon as he announced the number, I took off with a couple of other girls, only realizing after everyone started laughing that he hadn’t been serious.
3. ) Inside the Pentagon’s rings of hallways is a five-acre “ courtyard. ” In the middle is an unassuming building. One wouldn’t expect a small, whiteroofed building to have caused the uproar it did during the Cold War.
Russian satellites taking aerial photographs of the Pentagon were concerned about this building when they saw hundreds of people entering and exiting it many times during the day.
They began wildly speculating about its purpose: that it housed nuclear weapons... that the rest of the Pentagon was there only to protect this single building. What they missed from the photographs was beaming faces of people exiting, holding hot dogs.
That small building was, in fact, a hot dog stand.
4. ) On Sept. 11, 2001, a plane crashed into one side of the Pentagon, demolishing it and killing 125 people inside. Inside the Pentagon is a small memorial, not ostentatious, devoted to those who lost their lives in the Sept. 11 attacks. Disguised in this tragedy were merciful miracles, however. That entire section of the Pentagon was undergoing renovations, meaning that very few people were inside. Part of the renovations had consisted of fortifying the building with concrete reinforced with steel.
Not only was that side of the Pentagon the emptiest, it was the strongest.
One fifth-of the building was destroyed, but 125 is nowhere near one-fifth of 25, 000. Experts estimate that had the plane crashed into any other side, the building would have suffered vast damage and the casualty rate would have climbed by thousands.
Of course, all this information barely scratches the surface of Pentagon trivia. And in our hour-long tour, we walked a scant mile and barely covered any Pentagonal ground.
Here’s one more lesson I learned from my Pentagon tours: the next time I’m walking around in a building with 19 escalators, 131 flights of stairs, and 17 miles of hallways, I’ll wear comfortable shoes.